This was in 1807 and meteorites were not yet well known.
Dr. Benjamin Rush was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and a founding father; it was Rush who reconciled Adams and Jefferson’s friendship and convinced them to begin writing one another again. In some ways he was what modern minds would consider forward thinking - he was an abolitionist and believed that blacks were neither intellectually nor morally inferior, and that only slavery made them appear so. However, he also theorized that their color and appearance was caused by a benign form of congential leprosy, and that given proper medical treatment they could be “cured” and join white society.
They were all wrong, but Hamilton found out first. 
Thomas Jefferson believed that male gay sex should be punished by castration & female by cutting the nose. Granted, that was better than the death penalty, but that still makes most U.S. Christian Righties look tolerant by comparion.
I don’t know that “wrong” is in the same category as “reprehensible”. Obviously if someone held a view like this today, it would be horrible, but back then? I don’t know anything about this guy, but assuming this was a genuine hypothesis, then I don’t know that it’s worthy of condemnation.
Dueling was starting to become less acceptable at that time, though. Washington had encouraged his officers to refuse challenges, and Ben Franklin said dueling was uselessly violent.
Abigail Adams had encouraged the Founders to give women more rights. They didn’t.
I do, too. I’m sure I think and do some things that will seem horrifying to someone in 2210. But this is why I don’t think “what the Founders intended” is always the way things should be. The Founding Fathers were human, not some kind of gods, and they were a product of their time.
I agree, it wasn’t so much reprehensible as mistaken (and a tad paternalistic). Still, in a discussion of beliefs that look crazy in retrospect, it’s at least worth a mention.
Their goal was not to overthrow the government in England. They wanted independence. As such, it is not correct (IMO) to call our war with England the “Revolutionary War.” The “War of Independence” is much more accurate.
At any rate, I am a very big fan of Jefferson. But he was not without his human failings. (Who is?) He certainly didn’t think much of women. Curiously, the only woman whom he believed had brains was not his wife, but Abigail Adams. :dubious: He also didn’t think blacks and Caucasians were equals. None-the-less, I consider him the greatest of our Founding Fathers.
As a theory that someone came up with based on no evidence, I’d call it at least mildly “crazy”. Not really “reprehensible”, though.
Rush’s medical beliefs were all quackery. The same could be said for pretty much every doctor in the Western world at the time–leeches and bloodletting being the norm and the theory of cell pathology being nearly a century into the future–but this guy’s patients died en masse and most of them would have been safer with no medical care at all.
Neither. I am not expressing my own views. I am simply saying that the idea that the founding fathers were models of conservatism is misguided. And I’ve never said anything to suggest I was a liberal myself.
And you’re not going to find any crazy quotes, like the OP says, but if you look hard enough at every single one of them, you’ll find some views that don’t hold up so well.
Dude. It’s not out of line to point out that more often it’s the conservatives that reference good time past. The OP wasn’t questioning the good the founding fathers did only the deification of them. However they are, after all, not infallible.
When a senator stands on the podium and shouts, “This bill isn’t what the founding fathers would have wanted!”. The question isn’t would it have been, but rather is it what we want.
Stephen Ambrose in Undaunted Courage notes that Lewis and Clark took a LOT of very powerful purgative pills along with them, on the recommendation of Dr. Rush. He seemed to have believed that a good BM would cure virtually anything that ailed ya.
Nor was he wrong.
Dr. Rush called them Thunderclappers…
Well, Franco was definitely right-wing, but I was using Conservative in it’s more basic definitions, not as a translation for right wing politics.
From Wikipedia (I know):
Conservatism (Latin: conservare, “to preserve”) is a political and social philosophy that holds that traditional institutions work best and that society should avoid radical change.
Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, “of freedom”[1]) is the belief in the importance of liberty and equality.
However, while the Founding Fathers were also liberals, I would have been more accurate to describe them as radicals to better contrast them from Conservatives.
Khomeini was a radical fundamentalist and definitely not conservative as he wanted to overthrow the entire culture, not just the government.
I agree with your characterization of the War, but wouldn’t it be fair to say that they were overthrowing the English government of the Colonies? Specifically the Governor who was appointed by the English Government.
The founding fathers certainly had their faults, but the current crop of politicians are a generation of pygmies in comparison. We haven’t had a politician capable of original thought since Daniel Moynihan retired from the Senate.
Well, the counter-argument is that what they did worked for a little over 200 years, making the United States the richest, most powerful, successful country in modern history, and maybe in all history. Sure, it needed tweaks here and there, but it worked. The problem with the modern “what we want” sentiment is that we’re becoming more and more populist (which is something the founding fathers made very deliberate efforts to avoid). Chavez’s Venezuela is going never going to be world power, and sadly, populist sentiments are encroaching more and more on basic American liberties every year. Questioning whether or not something is what the founding fathers would have wanted or not is really just a shortcut to asking the questions, “Is this right? Or are we caving to populist sentiment?”
Perhaps. I was just pointing out that using the word “revolution” is probably not the best term for describing what happened. The French, OTOH, had a true revolution… :eek:
I was mainly pointing out that your statement that “Conservatives, by definition, don’t overthrow governments,” is demonstrably false. Political conservatives have repeatedly overthrown liberal or radical governments that they regarded as a threat to conservative values. The willingness to overthrow a government doesn’t have anything to do with liberalism or conservatism.